Echo In The Memory
by giadysik
Summary: AU. The Shield: the patient, the strong, the crazy. A trio of guns-for-hire working for Vince McMahon. When McMahon sends them after suspected terrorist William Regal, things take a turn for the truly bizarre. Nothing is as it seems. Also: Bray Wyatt hates when his things are stolen, and Daniel Bryan loves binary. [Slash. Ambrolleigns and every subset thereof. Ambregal.]
1. Prologue

A/N: This is very dark to start out with, but it'll lighten up as we go along. Also, it'll better-fit the summary past the prologue here. This just sets everything up. Slash (in subsequent chapters), and the usual disclaimers apply. It's very AU. I'd love to hear what you think.

**Prologue: **Forgetting  
_June 2014_

"They're dangerous," she whispered against his chest. "They stole your totem."

Bray held her close, rested his cheek in her soft-honey hair. "Yes, they did, darlin," he said. "They did, but we've got them now, haven't we? We'll get it back."

"We have to make them see they're wrong." Her small arms wrapped around him like vices. "We have to show them the truth. Lift the blinders from their eyes and show them that we're going to rebirth the universe in fire."

Her words threaded through his mind the same way, wrapping him in glorious sunshine warmth and bright purpose.

"We'll show them," he said, beaming down at her.

She was the light, the very beating heart of this universe, the essence of everything good and pure in it distilled down to one tiny, perfect slip of a woman who seemed to weigh less than the air around her.

He'd destroyed whole worlds for her, plucked their rotting hearts out of the coldness of space and devoured them whole, clearing out the decay and making way for new growth.

But now his universe had shrunk down to this tiny moment: a small, old wooden porch on a forgotten planet. Warm spring breeze carrying the scent of green trees and deep soil and muddy river, insects droning and buzzing, sky a faultless blue.

The old boards under his rocking chair squeaked.

He paid them no mind.

The small porch was crowded this afternoon: four of their followers, the best of them, standing with guns pointed straight and true at two battered, kneeling men.

These two men, they'd ambushed him three worlds ago, and they'd taken his totem.

They said it made him too dangerous.

It: a small metal disc that gave him the raw energy he needed to devour worlds whole.

Them: one man in an all-black suit, the other in a blood-spattered white shirt and ripped jeans, both shaggy-haired and blue-eyed, their hands bound behind them, bruised and beaten.

They said it made him too dangerous, having all that power, and they'd ambushed him three worlds ago to steal it. The feral-eyed man in white had held Abigail while the cold-eyed man in black had held an old metal knife to her throat.

_The lady or the totem_.

They didn't understand.

They were _cowards_, ignorant of Abigail's glory, and blinded by their own darkness, their own salivating monsters. They couldn't see that only by clearing away the diseased, rotting underbelly of the universe could there ever be room for new growth.

Change.

Dangerous men, though, and no one - _no one_ - knew that better than Bray.

They'd made him.

Mother and father.

"Misguided, both of you," he said to them, lifting his cheek from Abigail's hair. "Lost in the dark. Too blind to see the path of salvation I've set at your feet. We're the redeemers, she and I. It's you, with all your wars and the monsters you hide from the daylight, who are the destroyers. You're driven by lust for power and disarray, and greed for blood, just like all the other lost souls. You're the disease. We're the cure. If you'd just follow us, if you'd give me my power back, you could follow us as we cleared out all the sick and dying, the immorality and corruption, all the decay, and led the way to a new promised land."

"Promised land my ass," Mama said. Even kneeling and beaten he wasn't still, shoulders swaying back and forth like they were caught in the breeze. "You just want an excuse to eat more planets. Which, not to be a dick or anything, but you're looking a little chubby there, Bray. Those gas giants are going straight to your gut. Gonna have to watch that. You got your dad's metabolism."

Daddy shot Mama a dirty look. "Did you just call me fat?"

Mama's swollen mouth twitched. "Nope. I mean, you do kinda got a little shed built over your tools, but I don't mind." He turned his attention back to Bray. "So when the fuck did you get so, like, melodramatic about shit, anyway?"

"_That_ he gets from you," Daddy said before Bray could answer.

Mama glared at him. "The fuck he does!"

"If you so much as stub your toe, you act like you've damaged a vital organ."

"Well, that shit hurts!"

"Yes, but the way you bang on about it, you'd think you were dying."

"STOP IT!" Abigail suddenly shrieked at them, her tiny voice splitting the air like a sharp thunder-crack. "STOP IT NOW!"

She didn't speak up often, but when she did, the whole world stopped to listen.

He tucked her head back down against his shoulder and adjusted her in his lap, his little light in her pretty white sun dress.

The old boards squeaked under the chair as he rocked with her, and for a few heartbeats, it was the only sound.

Their men straightened up behind Mama and Daddy, the guns they'd let start to drift down once again aimed at the back of Mama and Daddy's heads.

Bray chuckled. "Look at you. BIckering like children. So convinced you've won. So blind to what you've lost."

"You're not getting that totem back, Bray," Mama said quietly, strange blue eyes gone cold as Daddy's. "I won't tell you where I put it."

"Oh, I don't _need_ it," Bray drawled. He rocked just a bit faster. "I can spread Abigail's good news without it. People will suffer and die for your short-sightedness, but-"

"They'd die anyway," Daddy said. "This isn't about redemption and you bloody know it. This is some fool's errand to impress a girl." He shook his hair off of his face. "You're the misguided one here, sunshine. You can't see how deeply she's got her claws in you - how she's using you. She wants your totem, not you. She wants the power so she can destroy everything. She doesn't give a damn about saving anything."

"That's not true," Abigail whispered. She clutched Bray's flowered shirt like it was keeping her from drowning, her blue-sky eyes wide and bright. "I want to save them. We have to save them. I need you to help me."

"I know," he soothed her, brushing a kiss across her forehead. "I know. They're the users, the liars. They think I can't see them for the monsters they really are, but believe me, I do. You showed me." He lifted his eyes to his parents. "You and people like you are the disease. We're the cure."

"Yeah, well," Mama said, "good fuckin' luck. You think the Ministry is gonna sit by and let you 'cure the disease' by blowing everything fucking apart? Fuck no. What's gonna happen - soon - is they're gonna send a dozen Fleet Warhawks to blow your shuttle right out of space. And then what? You'll be dead, and your little bitch there will float off and find somebody else to haunt, and it'll fucking start all over again." He pushed to his feet. "_Bray_. Fucking listen to me for once in your life. She isn't what you think she is. She's-"

"LIAR!" Abigail howled.

Harper stepped forward and smashed the butt of his gun across Mama's back. Mama stumbled and fell. Without hands to catch himself, he landed on his face, the old wood scraping it raw.

Bray set Abigail down and crawled out of his chair to lean over him. "Give me back my totem, Mama. I don't wanna have to hurt you and Daddy, but I will. Oh I will."

"Fuck you," Mama snarled, lunging again. "You're not getting your totem."

Bray caught him, held him off. It was like holding a live wire, the way Mama twisted and lunged and fought, but he was injured and Bray was stronger.

"Let him go!" Daddy thundered. He twitched forward, but froze when Rowan pressed the rifle barrel to his head.

The blank sheep's mask Rowan wore was a stark contrast to the twisted rage on Daddy's face.

Off to one side, Abigail watched, her hands folded neat and prim in front of her. "Hurt them," she whispered. "Make them see how much they've hurt you. They have to see."

Bray shoved Mama down, rose, and walked back into the old house.

His brother Daniel was still unconscious on the floor, and Bray signaled for Paul, who'd been watching over him, to carry him outside. Paul, bald-headed giant of a man, picked Daniel up and brought him outside, dumping him unceremoniously in front of Bray's rocking chair.

Abigail drifted over, curious as a child. Bray gently shooed her away. He lifted a foot and settled it on the back of Daniel's neck, just below the clot of bloody hair.

Grinned as he watched the color drain out of his parents' faces. Now he had their attention. Mama had pulled himself back up to his knees by Daddy. "What the fuck did you do to him?"

"An eye for an eye, Mama," Bray answered. "You stole my totem. I stole your firstborn. Give it back to me, and you can have him. I'd rather it not come to this - am I not my brother's keeper? - but you're not _listening_."

"No," Daddy said. "It's you who isn't bloody listening. We know what it is she wants you to do. 'Purify' the universe. It's a pretty way of saying burn it to the ground and piss on its ashes. That's what she wants. She doesn't want to save it. She's-"

"LIES!" Abigail screamed again. Her tiny hands covered her ears. "Oh, the lies, they cut me so, Bray! Wicked, wicked men. They hurt me! They hurt me! Stop them! Hurt them. _Hurt_ them."

"Misguided fools. Lost sheep. I'm trying to show you the way." Bray reared back and kicked Daniel in the side. Daniel didn't stir. "Give. Me. My. Totem." He punctuated each word with a kick.

Daniel groaned faintly.

Mama growled again, wildcat on the attack, and surged forward, only to have Rowan snag him by the back of his tee shirt and fling him down onto the rotting old porch. "You hurt him, I'll fuckin' kill you!" he snarled. "He didn't do anything! Fucking let him go. Let me go!"

"Give me my totem," Bray shouted, angry and desperate. He couldn't fail her. _Couldn't_. Not now. "Give me my totem."

"No!"

"Bray!" Daddy thundered. "Bray, _look at yourself_! Bloody _look_ at what you're doing! That's your _brother_. You're killing your brother. Your brother who's done nothing but try to help you. The only one who never gave up on you. Look at him."

Bray stopped, blinking down at himself. At his brother.

It was Daniel from whom Bray had gotten the idea to grow the beard.

He'd idolized his brother, once.

Before.

But Daniel had betrayed him, too.

Abigail's soft hand closed around his. Warmth flooding his mind like a June kiss. "They're making you do it. Just remember that, Bray. They're making you hurt him because they won't open their eyes to the truth."

"No we're not," Daddy said. "It's her. She's using you. She's making you. She's going to burn you down along with everything else. You'll have killed us - your _family_ - and you'll die alone with nothing. She's the lie."

"You're the lie," Abigail spat at him. "You threw him away because you didn't understand what he was. I do. He's the voice that'll deliver hope of salvation. Give him his totem."

"No." Mama sat back on his heels and looked tiredly up at them. One eye had begun to swell shut. Blood trickled down his cheek. "That's enough. I mean, I'm all for blowing shit up and causing as much trouble as I can, but not on the scale you're talking. I can't. So no. That's it. You can't have it. If that means you kill us and Fleet blows you outta the sky, so be it. Do whatever you gotta do, but you better do it yourself. And you fucking better look us and your brother in the eye when you do it. Don't be a pussy."

Daddy scooted closer to Mama until they were pressed shoulder to shoulder, a rare show of solidarity. Surprising warmth in his smile. "Well put." He turned back to Bray, and the smile faded. "No more of this nonsense, Bray. She's a liar and she's going to get you killed, but if you can't see that - if you won't listen, if you harm your brother - then I suppose all I can do is wash my hands of you."

Bray cajoled.

Bray demanded.

Bray tried again and again to get the totem's location out of them.

Mama and Daddy remained silent, refusing to talk even after Harper and Rowan hit them both again, refusing even after big Paul picked Daniel up and slammed him down onto the porch again and again.

He made Harper and Rowan hold their heads up so they couldn't look away.

Birds cried overhead. Insects reeped and droned, and clouds thickened against the sweltering sky as the afternoon stretched its way into the evening.

It was Abigail, who'd crawled into the rocking chair to watch it all play out, who finally stopped it.

She touched Bray's hand as he stood panting over his very beaten parents.

They weren't dead, either of them, but neither one was really conscious anymore.

Abigail said, "If they won't tell us where they hid _that _totem, we'll just go find the shaman and make him give us another." She smiled and touched her forehead. "I'm so silly. I should have thought of that before."

As he looked down over the wreckage, Bray felt a momentary anger. "Abigail-"

She squeezed his hand. Warmth in his mind again cocooning him. "They had this coming for what they did to you. In fact," she added, stepping forward, "they deserve more. For all the lies they've told you about me. For all the lies they told you." Her little feet left bloody footprints as she crossed over to where Mama and Daddy lay. "They haven't suffered near enough." She crouched down near Mama's now-dislocated shoulder. "They hurt you so bad, Bray. They took everything from you. We should take everything from them."

Bray wiped damp hands on his shirt. "I thought we were gonna try to save them, darlin."

"We will," she said. "We take everything so they'll know what suffering really is. We'll make them humble. Make them crawl on their bellies until they're ready to beg us to show them the way out of the dark. And while they're learning how to crawl, we'll go ahead to light the way."

"How?" he asked.

He knew, though; she couldn't pull thoughts out of people's minds, but she could put them in.

She'd done it to some of their followers.

Never to him, though, he was sure.

Her hands began to glow faint white - a much fainter white than they used to. She touched Mama's bloody forehead. HIs one good eye was open and it turned toward the light. He mouthed the word, "Bitch."

Abigail's face twisted as she pressed down. "We make them remember what isn't true. Make them forget what is. Remember pain, forget happiness. Remember suffering, forget hope. Remember-" Mama's hand shot up and wrapped around her throat.

Harper, who'd been leaning against one of the porch's rotting pillars, stepped forward and stomped Mama's arm.

Bones snapped.

Mama was still.

Abigail's china doll face twisted.

"Forget," she whispered. "And remember."

Somewhere outside a bird screamed.

Bray shuddered.

_Forget_.

xXx

July 12, 2014  
Colorado

_Goddamn parachute cord snapped off, and now Seth was in free-fall, ten thousand feet above the drop zone and everything rushing up to him in a kind sickening fast-motion blur._

_Fuck, he was going to die_.

"_Dead. Alive. Dead. Alive."_

Seth's eyes snapped open - not so much awoken as thrown out of his dreams.

He took a deep breath, relieved, as both a sense of place and the realization that he was safe washed over him.

Moonlit dark in a cramped Colorado hotel room, and it was _hot_.

The little window AC unit didn't do much more than stir the air like a wood spoon in a pot of boiling soup, and not a breath of breeze drifted in from the open windows.

Sweating and uneasy all over, Seth lifted his head from Roman's damp, too-warm chest and looked around.

The other bed was empty, but that was hardly a surprise.

Dean rarely slept these days, and, sure enough, he was awake, and doing what he usually did in the middle of the night: sitting in a chair next to the window, knees pulled up to his chest, staring out at the night, chewing his nails and mumbling under his breath.

The full moon's shine made his white tee shirt appear to glow, winked off his earring, and illuminated the tear tracks on his cheeks. "He's dead," he was saying. "No, he's alive. No, dead. Alive. Dead. No, alive."

Six weeks ago, he'd been captured and spent a day as a hostage to some very strange people.

Whatever they'd done to him, they'd really _done_ to him, and now he wasn't the same.

It was like his mind had been torn in half, snapped right down the middle.

Seth sighed softly.

Roman's strong arms tightened around him.

_I know, baby_.

Saying anything right now would probably just trigger another rage attack, and they both knew it.

Not much they could do but leave Dean to his tears and his self-inflicted war by night, and hope peace would find him in the morning,

It did, sometimes; he'd crawl into the too-small bed with them and they'd have sleepy morning sex while the sun came up, just like they used to, and Seth could convince himself that today would be the day that things would slot back into the groove.

Never did, though, exactly.

xXx  
July 12, 2014  
New York City

William Regal set the empty beer bottle down on the gravestone.

Bit of gallows humor, he supposed, but he didn't doubt the gesture would be appreciated.

Cheap American beer.

Better than flowers.

Regal had quit drinking the year Dean had been murdered, but every year, to mark the anniversary, he went to the bar where they'd met and bought one bottle, which he poured out - rubbish beer, even by American standards - in the bathroom and smuggled out the door.

The cemetery's maintenance crew would, of course, find it in the morning and toss it away, but for a night, at least, it would stand in tribute.

Fingers ghosting over granite still warm from the day's heat, and Regal was struck, as he always was, by the stark simplicity of this headstone compared to the others around it. Most had intricate designs, hobbies and loves memorialized in stone, quotes and Bible passages there to try to encapsulate the essence of the person buried underneath.

This was merely a gray granite rectangle with a name and two dates.

No frills.

Dean would have appreciated that, too.

For all his eccentricities, he lived his life without them.

Of course, he'd died young enough - been murdered young enough - he hadn't had time to acquire many.

Regal knelt on the soft grass. Fussed with the beer bottle to make sure the label was facing just-so.

Light from the moon filled it.

He could feel tears on his cheeks, but he didn't bother to wipe them away.

_Dead_, his mind whispered at him. _Still dead_. _Always dead. And you're still alive. Alone._

He touched the inscription again, tracing the letters AMBROSE with two fingers.

"Damn you," he said softly, "for leaving me alone. You're still dead and I'm still alive. I think I hate you for that. I shouldn't, but there it is.

"I want to forget I ever knew you, you rotten bastard, but dammit, I still love you.

"Why won't you let me go?"

He waited in the cemetery's warm summer dark, surrounded by the dead, for an answer he knew wasn't coming.

Eventually, he rose, straightened his rumpled suit, and made his way home.

xXx

A/N: Like I said, this turned out a lot darker than I expected, but it's not a death fic. It's honestly more of a crack fic gone serious, and I hope this wasn't too hard to follow.

Hats off to you if you figured out who Bray's "Mama" and "Daddy" are, by the by. I don't know why, but that idea kind of tickled me. (It's nuts, but this whole effed-up story is.) Yes, Bray's "Mama" is a man. This will be a thing that is explained later.

Thanks for reading!


	2. Spinning

A/N: Dark and light. Another sort of scene-setter, but at least with some plot. Smut, too. A little bit of everything. Enjoy.

**I. Spinning  
**Mid-July, 2014  
Colorado

It was half a dozen radio stations in his head, all screaming over each other at once:

He'd lost something, but he hadn't lost anything.

He had memories missing, but he hadn't ever forgotten a thing that had happened to him.

There was man, but there wasn't.

The man had died on a cold New York street ten years ago, but the man was still alive.

(_There is no man._)

(_There is_.)

The King of Spades: the man in black with the knifeblade smile and polished chrome eyes.

_(There is no man.)_

(_There is_.)

They'd hated each other, but they'd loved each other.

(_There is no man_.)

(_There is_.)

A vicious circle of contradictions slicing up the inside of his brain with their nonsensical broken-bottle edges:

Is/isn't, was/wasn't, are/aren't.

Dead/alive. Real/imagined. Love/hate.

Round and round and round it went, like a roulette wheel primed to spin forever.

(_Remember_.)

(_Forget_.)

Shaking in the light of a low-slung moon, hunched behind his own knees to make himself small against the hotel's outside wall, one fist stuffed against his mouth to stifle the words that couldn't stop tumbling out, tear-drowned eyes pinched shut, loaded gun pressed against his temple like some hard accusatory finger.

His own gun, clenched in a trembling hand, the familiar weight the only solace he had.

His own hand, his own gun, his own _terms_.

Anything to end the fucking war in his head.

_Dead._

_Alive_.

"Stop," he whispered wetly against his fist. "Stop, stop, _stop_."

Dean Ambrose straightened the gun against his temple and _squeezed_.

xXx

_Snap_.

Nothing.

Fully-loaded gun with brand new bullets.

Fifth misfire tonight.

Third night in a row.

_Nothing_.

xXx

The stolen box of bullets at his hip stood open like some grotesque mouth, shell-casing teeth exposed in a ghoulish mocking grin.

The bottle of gun oil he'd used to polish his gun until it gleamed stood laughing right next to a discarded, rumpled rag.

_You're still alive.  
_

xXx

He squeezed again.

Another misfire.

HIs chest heaved, his brain argued with itself, and his fucking heart beat on while the hot summer night hummed and sang around him.

(_Like it had on that old porch he was never on_.)

_Snap._

Nothing.

xXx

Sometime before dawn, he gathered everything up, scrubbed his overheated and tear-puffy face on his tee shirt, and quietly made his way back into the hotel room.

Seth and Roman slept in the first bed, so wrapped up around each other it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

As much as he wanted not to be the only one awake right now, Dean didn't have it in him to wake them.

They were stressed about him enough as it was.

Mouse-quiet, he put his things away, and then retreated to the other bed

He stared up at the ceiling until daylight began leaching in around the curtains.

The radios blared in his head, and the empty snap of all those misfires echoed in his ears like the throb of a guilty heartbeat.

_Click._

(_Forget_.)

_Click_.

(_Remember_.)

xXx

Seth Rollins slipped out from behind the big pine tree and trained his binoculars on the building north of them.

From a distance, it looked like an abandoned cabin in the woods - broken windows, logs rotted away in a couple of spots in the corners, unpatched hole in the roof, stack of old firewood lying near the porch like some unwanted dog.

This deep in the mountains, none of that seemed out of place.

What did was the pair of sheds next to the cabin, which, despite _looking_dilapidated had steel keypads on their doors.

That, and the eight guys in camo with AK-47s strapped around their shoulders who moved around the house like bees swarming their hive.

This far away, Seth couldn't hear them talking - couldn't hear much of anything, really, except the faint swish of the breeze through the leafy tops of the aspen trees and the occasional buzz of an insect - but he thought the men looked pretty relaxed.

He passed the binoculars over to Roman. "Goat Face was right," he said. "This is the place."

Roman took a look for himself, and grunted. "Those generator sheds?"

"Could be," Seth said. He cocked his head to one side, squinting through the old forest. "I don't hear anything, but maybe they're sound-proofed."

"Maybe."

Seth leaned sideways against the big pine tree's trunk, and winced at the bark's rough scrape against his bare shoulder. "I don't like this."

Roman passed the binoculars around to Dean, and turned back to Seth, disquiet brewing deep in his gray eyes. "Yeah," he said at last. "That's a whole lotta firepower for one hacker. You see the rocket launcher?"

"No," Seth admitted. "Where was it?"

"Between the sheds. Heavy artillery. Either this dude is paranoid as hell or he's into more than just hacking."

Seth scrubbed a hand over his face. "Fuck."

A hacker named Ryder had managed to break into The McMahon Group's heavily-fortified servers and steal all kinds of sensitive financial data - tax records, bank accounts, even some employees' social security numbers.

Technically speaking, it should have been the Secret Service and FBI doing this, and the fact it wasn't remained a thorn in Seth's paw even now, but Vince McMahon himself had handwaved that away by saying he wanted to have his own people handle the operation because he didn't trust the Feds not to screw it up.

His own people.

Three guys with handguns against at least eight with AK-47s and a fucking rocket launcher.

Like taking a water balloon to a grenade fight.

They'd faced worse odds before, but they'd usually had the weapons and backup at hand in case something went wrong. This time, they'd just been thrown on a plane and dumped in the rural Colorado mountains two days ago to "take care of this as quickly and quietly as possible."

"Looks like a way in underground on the wet side," Dean said just then. He'd crouched down on the other side of the tree, and was looking at the opposite side of the cabin from where the sheds and most of the men were. "Cellar or something. Satellite dish on a pole over there, too. But did you see their jackets?"

"What about 'em?" Seth asked.

"The big patches on the arms," Dean said, gesturing over his own bare bicep to indicate how big he meant. "That snake one. The rattlesnake or the cobra or whatever. You know. Black and like white or silver."

"You mean the viper," Roman corrected him absently. His mouth was a grim line, the white around it standing out against the dark of his goatee as he caught Seth's eye. "Orton."

"Orton," Seth agreed. "Fuck _me_."

Sudden unease as stifling as the day's dry heat rolled over him.

Eight guys with big guns they could handle, no problem, but Randy Orton being involved was a plot twist they didn't fucking need.

Orton's dad was Vince's lawyer.

Randy was the family's black sheep - bad kid gone wannabe terrorist - but Cowboy Bob was still as protective of his only son as a mother bear was of her cub.

They were damned if they did and damned if they didn't, weren't they?

Seth armed sweat off his face and wished, for the hundredth time, he'd remembered to put his hair up before they'd left this morning, as chunks of sweat-matted blond and black kept sticking to his cheeks.

Made it hard to think.

Late afternoon sun cut slanting shadows between all the trees around them, giving the forest floor a strangely barcoded look.

A barred-in jail cell sort of look.

That didn't help, either.

"I think we need to call this in," he said at last. He took the binoculars back. "Vince never mentioned Orton being involved."

Roman hooked both hands in his tac vest's neckline. "Maybe he didn't know."

Dean flinched away from a lumbering horsefly that buzzed like a fucking buzzsaw as hovered near his face. He swatted at it, jerkily. "The fuck away from me," he muttered at it, glaring. "I'll fuckin' shoot your little ass. And who cares? Seth can do his stealth shit on at least half those guys. We can stick me up in a nest to pick off the rest. Won't matter if we make noise - no one's gonna be close enough to do anything about it. Let's just get this shit done. Get back to civilization." He flapped both hands in front of his face. "Fucking get _away_. Jesus, I swear this thing has a beard. Like fucking _Teenage Mutant Ninja Fly _or something. Gah. Bastard."

Seth swore to God he heard the fly buzz like _bzz-bzz-bzz_, in short bursts like it was laughing. He snorted himself and exchanged brief _what an idiot _smirks with Roman. "It's just a fly, man," he said. "Seriously, just calm down."

"I think it wants to eat me."

"I'm gonna _swat_ you like a fly if you don't shut up and pay attention," Roman said, the smile in his eyes taking the sting out of the words. "We need to call it in. I'm with Seth on that one."

Dean's mouth twisted. "There's a shocker."

"Hey-"

"It's fine." He glanced Seth's way.

And his eyes suddenly popped open wide.

"_Down_!" he snapped, and launched himself forward, barrelling into Seth like a human bowling ball as gunshots exploded from somewhere nearby.

All at once the whole fucking world seemed to devolve into sheer, stupid chaos.

They tumbled to the ground like a pair of uncoordinated bowling pins, and it felt like the air right over their heads was just fucking ripped apart by the bullets that whizzed by.

The bullets plinked into the dirt near them, the AK's sounding like roaring animals as they fired.

Seth's ears started ringing.

Bark shrapnel from nearby bullet-pierced trees rained down on them from what felt like everywhere.

And for one awful second, caught out in the middle of a small clearing in the middle of a rural Colorado mountain, Seth Rollins was pretty fucking sure he was about to die.

xXx

But complete chaos was The Shield's element, really.

And somehow, they always found a way.

xXx

Two years of training and eighteen months of top-level fieldwork, and by this point they fit so well together that when the shit hit the fan, they stopped being three separate people and started working as a single machine:

Dean toppling Seth to save his ass, and Roman throwing down cover fire to save them both.

Overlapping legs of a near-perfect triangle.

xXx

How Seth and Dean didn't get turned into Swiss cheese Seth never knew, but he'd learned a long time ago never to question his good luck.

Another piece of ridiculous good luck: their attackers made the mistake of coming at them from the same direction, so when Roman threw himself behind a tree and started firing back, it gave Seth and Dean time to make a flight-driven scramble over to a huge overturned tree stump nearby.

Wasn't much protection against AK bullets, which popped and whined as they tore chunks out of the dry old wood, but it was something.

"Fuck," Seth panted, rubbing the shoulder he'd landed on when Dean had knocked him down. "You okay?"

Dean nodded. He had a long scratch over one cheek and another on his chin, but neither looked very deep. "You?"

"I'm all right. Where the fuck did they come from?"

"Somewhere behind you." He already had his guns in hand. "Two or three of 'em. I don't know. Went down too fucking fast."

A rapid-fire burst of gunfire - _bam-bam-bam_ - against the old stump drowned out everything, the sound echoing and ricocheting off the tree trunks around them.

It made the whole fucking stump shake like a scared little kid.

A big chunk of wood pinged off overhead. Seth watched it lodge itself, spear-like, into the ground near his boot. "Fuck. We need to know how many. Take a look. Don't shoot yet."

Eyes gleaming, Dean nodded. then he reminded Seth of a shark that had scented blood in the water: a singularly focused kind of fucking crazy. He gestured to his left. "I'll go that side."

Seth crept over to the right, squinting out between a couple of gnarly roots.

Short bursts of gunfire continued to pepper the stump and the ground in front of it, sending more stinging bits of wood shrapnel and dirt clods up into Seth's face and obscuring his view.

He thought he saw three before he had to crawl back over to the thicker part of the stump.

Dean joined him. "I made four," he said. "Two north of Roman and two east of us. They're in cover and spread out. Got us pinned down pretty fucking good."

Seth nodded grimly. Fucking sucked they'd spread out; clustered together, it made for easier kills.

So what it came down to was it was six handguns and maybe a dozen clips against four AKs and God only knew how much ammo.

Plus the backup that was probably on its way.

No way they'd survive a war of attrition.

Dean must have figured that, too, because he flicked the safeties off both guns and pulled himself into a coiled crouch. "We stay, we're dead in the water. I'm gonna take a run at the dude closest to us. See if I can flush these assholes out. You and Roman get your asses out of here."

"Are you fucking _nuts_?" Seth snapped at him. "You're gonna get yourself killed."

"We try to wait this out or we try to run now, they mow us down. This way, I can distract 'em. Give you guys a chance at a head start."

"Dude, you won't make it three fucking steps."

That damned manic gleam again. "Fifty bucks says I get ten."

Another bullet whizzed way too close to the top of his head, and he flinched. "No. _Fuck_no. How the fuck would I collect it off you if you're _dead_, asshole?"

"Take it out of my wallet. I got all the other money I owe you in there, too. I got _all_the money." Get ready to move."

Spooky quick, before Seth could even start to reach for him, he uncoiled and vaulted over the trunk, howling like a fucking loon.

Like a coked-up Al Paccino gone full-on fucking _Scarface_.

He made straight for the dude to the right of them, and not a single fucking thing hit him as he ran.

"Rome, get the fuck out of here," he yelled over the din, eyes never leaving the man ahead of him.

He fired off four shots as the dude fired at him.

The dude fell over dead, face all but liquefied, and still, not a single fucking thing had hit Dean.

Seth watched in a frozen crouch as all three of the dudes in cammo broke cover and opened fire.

_Fuck running._

On pure reflex, he ninja-rolled out from behind the stump and came up guns aimed at one whose head had emerged over the top of a brush pile.

Four shots put him down.

Roman popped out from behind his tree and shot another, dark head darting out and disappearing quick like one of those moles in a Whack-a-Mole game.

That was three.

Roman took out the last one, too.

Dude ran out of ammo and jumped out behind a white ash tree, sunlight catching on the knifeblade he held hight in his hand. He made straight for Roman, who fucking launched himself like a cannonball at the asshole. He spear-tackled the guy and in one quick motion, snapped his fucking neck.

Afterward, Roman roared like a fucking lion, and despite the situation Seth found himself kind of turned on - especially when the big man stood up and flexed.

Fucking Adonis over there, even with his normally flowing fucking mane tied back in a tail.

Seth grinned at him, charged up and fucking _ready_, and threw a fist in the air.

They'd fucking survived.

Roman grinned back and flexed again, sweat on his tattoo making it fucking _shine_.

A chunk of wood suddenly smacked into Seth's forehead.

He turned and found Dean watching him from the bullet-stung stump, bright eyes abnormally shuttered. "You can climb on his dick later," he said. "I hear engines. What are we doing?"

Ground rumbling under his boots like light earthquakes, and it snapped Seth back to reality fast. "Shit," he said. "Let's get back to the truck. Try to regroup back at the hotel."

Nobody argued with him for once.

xXx

The hounds fled through the sweltering forest.

Strategic retreat - _smart _retreat - rather than simple cowardice.

Seth knew if they had more weapons, every one of them would have wanted to stay.

That was the The Shield.

xXx

An hour later, all of them red-faced and sagging and on the verge of heat stroke, they made it back to the little copse of trees where they'd stashed the truck.

All three of them were scratched up and bruised, but wonder of wonders, none of them had taken any real damage.

They'd left the engine sound far behind them, but none of them dared relax.

Roman quietly and steadily searched the horizon.

Dean twitched and jerked and peered around in every direction like some paranoid junkie.

Seth himself kept his ears open, but otherwise made himself focus on what was ahead as he directed the other two to help him pull the branches off the truck.

Roman climbed into the passenger's seat once they were done, while Seth slid in behind the wheel and Dean hunkered down alone in the back.

Nothing in their rearview, and Seth allowed himself a quietly relieved sigh.

"Jesus," he muttered, hands tight on the wheel. "We gotta call in now."

"Yeah," Roman said quietly. "You telling him about those viper patches?"

"I got to, man."

"So what happened back there?"

Seth negotiated the truck around a particularly sharp corner. It bounced and jostled in the old dirt ruts, and he waited until they were on smoother ground before answering, "We live to fight another day, man. What else?"

Roman looked at him dubiously, but kept his mouth shut.

Seth kind of loved him for that.

xXx

Hotel-bound now, and the room was still too fucking hot by far.

The air conditioner had wheezed out a dying gasp and given up sometime while the Shield had been struggling to keep their asses alive.

Wussy fucking thing anyway.

Seth couldn't tell if he was sweating because of that or because Vince McMahon's face on the tablet's screen had gone an alarming, plummy shade of red.

Seth had just broken the news about the viper patches on the jackets.

"I see," Vince said, hazel eyes like _glowing_. "Well, I'll have a word with Bob about that, then. Thank you for bringing that to my attention."

"Do our orders still stand, sir?" Seth asked carefully. Behind him, Roman and Dean fidgeted like a couple of in-trouble schoolboys standing in front of their principal.

"No," Vince replied, his normally-booming voice tinny through the tablet's tiny speaker. "I'm rolling this one up into a bigger assignment I need the three of you for. You'll still get your guaranteed money for this one, of course, but for what I've got in mind, we're going to need to renegotiate your contracts."

Seth blinked. "Renegotiate?"

"Drive down to the airport in Denver tomorrow morning," Vince said. "I'll send the little jet for you there. We'll talk when you out here."

The screen went back as Vince hung up without even bothering to say goodbye.

Seth released a breath he hadn't been aware he'd been holding, and looked over his shoulder at his partners. "The fuck was that about?"

It was Dean who shrugged jerkily and said, "It's McMahon. Who knows? Anyway, we'll find out tomorrow, right? Night off tonight. So forget about it." Crooked fingers absently scratched red lines into the insides of his elbows. Sweat-matted brown hair obscured his eyes. "I wanna fuck. All that fighting got me going. Can we?"

"I was thinking about hitting the pool for a bit," Roman said as he pulled the tie out of his hair, which cascaded down around his face like some dark waterfall. "I'm not really in the mood right now, anyway. Need to unwind for a while first. Maybe later." He caught Seth's eye. "You coming?"

"Yeah, I think so," Seth said. "A swim sounds good right now." Chlorine would probably irritate the hell out of the various and sundry cuts he'd gotten today, but the prospect of dipping into cool water was too good to pass up. "Come down with us, Dean."

Dean shook his head and walked over to his bed and flopped down on his back. "I don't like swimming."

"I know," Seth said patiently, "but you can come sit poolside. Have a beer. Just chill. Looking like a nice night."

The sun had mostly sunk down below the horizon, leaving the sky glowing orange along the bottom and star-speckled indigo, clear and cloudless, everywhere else.

"Too many fuckin' bugs out there," Dean said. "Mosquitoes and shit. I don't wanna get like West Nile or whatever that shit is."

"So put on bug spray, you pussy," Seth said. "Come on. Pool now, sex later."

"Cool shower and movie now," Dean corrected him. "Sex later."

"Just let it go," Roman said impatiently. He was bare-chested, tan and sweaty, and for a second, Seth honestly considered changing his mind and jumping him.

When Roman bent down to unlace his boots, Seth could only stare down at the broad expanse of his back and the black-clad curve of his ass.

Roman shot him a look over his shoulder. Smirked. Licked his lips. "You going swimming in your gear, baby, or you gonna get changed?"

Fuck, even with the beginning of a shiner and a gash on his forehead, the man was pure fucking sex.

Seth swallowed. "Thought you weren't in the mood."

"Not yet," Roman shrugged. "Didn't say I wouldn't be later. Come on."

He went back to digging through his bag.

Seth resumed his leering until a fat white pillow fwapped hm upside the head.

"Quit fucking throwing things at me!" he snapped at Dean.

"Quit fucking staring at his ass," Dean said. "Get fucking changed, go swimming, and fucking get back here." He'd stripped off his shirt and was running his hand over the front of his pants, where he had a pretty obvious hard-on tenting the fabric. "Fuck."

Roman's dirty chuckle floated up.

Seth kicked him in the ass. "Shut up. And _you_," he added, turning back to Dean, "get your fucking hands off your dick or I'll cuff you to the headboard again. You don't touch it until we get back."

Dean's lust-glazed eyes widened, for a second he looked torn. "Oh, come on. I'm _dying_ here. I'll be ready again by the time you guys are."

He did at least pull his hand away.

Seth crawled onto the bed and straddled his hips, deliberately settling his ass over Dean's very hard, but still very much covered, cock, and grinding down.

Dean threw back his head. "Fuck!"

Seth did it again, hands settling on Dean's shoulders.

Dean _bucked_ underneath him.

Roman continued to laugh darkly behind them.

Seth did it a third time, grinding down and twisting his his hips to get as much friction on Dean's probably aching cock as he could.

Taking out his frustration at Roman on Dean, but Dean didn't look like he gave a shit.

In fact, his eyes looked like they were about to roll into the back of his head. "Fuck, don't stop."

"Be good," Seth said, moving off. "Keep your hands off that, and I'll come finish you off right."

"What? No, come on! Get back here, man."

"Either take a cold shower or come swimming, but keep your hands off your dick like Seth said," Roman told him. Buck naked and entirely unselfconscious, he padded over to his bag and bent over it, treating both Dean and Seth to a spectacular full-moon view of his muscular backside.

He was totally doing it on purpose, the bastard, and the noise Seth made wasn't quite human.

Neither was the one Dean made from the bed.

"I hate you both," he groaned. "I hate you so fucking much right now."

Roman turned and and flashed them both a grin as he pulled black and green swim trunks on.

xXx

As he followed Roman down to the pool deck, towel draped over his shoulder, Seth felt lighter than he had in weeks.

Hard to believe not four hours ago, they'd been fighting for their lives.

But that was how it worked: you learned how to compartmentalize.

Turn it on to fight when you need it.

Turn it off and forget it when you don't.

Try to, anyway.

Otherwise, it would just make you crazy.

xXx

The pool deck was technically closed for the day, but Seth and Roman both managed managed to bribe the long-haired cutie at the front desk into letting them go out, "For a bit."

Seth stood back enough that she had a full view of him in his tiny blue Speedos, and had to stifle a laugh every time he saw her eyes start to flick down and then back up.

He was pretty sure she stared at their asses as they made their way through the pool deck's door.

Wasn't much of a deck: just a rough concrete pad with a dozen or so sagging, aged deck chairs scattered here and there and a splintery old picnic table set off to one side. A chain-link fence with board slats run through it offered a semblance of privacy.

The pool itself was little more than a rectangular hole in the ground, decent-sized, with a diving board on one end and a few of those inflatable floating chairs hovering in the shallow end.

Seth cannonballed between them like a ridiculous little kid and came up grinning.

Roman dove in, graceful as a dolphin, and paddled lazily toward the middle.

There were no lights on anywhere nearby, but the stars and moon overhead provided plenty to see by.

Seeing the stars out like that always reminded Seth achingly of being seven or eight and his parents waking him up late one Iowa summer night to drive out to a field outside of town. They'd sat together – him, his sister, and his parents – and watched meteors streak against the sky like tiny, distant fireworks.

He hadn't been back in almost five years.

But he didn't let himself dwell on it right now, not with Roman looking like sex swimming and Dean seeming more like himself than he had since he'd come back.

He and Roman swam silent, lazy laps for a while, passing each other occasionally, but not making much effort to keep up.

Nice night for it: warm and mellow, air still, the bugs Dean was so freaked out about practically non-existent.

By some unspoken, telepathic signal, he and Roman started drifting toward each other.

They met in shallow end, water up to their waists, and Seth found himself tugged in and wrapped up for a long, slow kiss, easy and unhurried and just right.

He let his hands wander, two fingers mindlessly tracing the intricate lines and patterns of the tattoo on Roman's forearm, his other hand moving down to Roman's ass.

Roman's hands found their way around to cup Seth's. He pulled them tight together.

Seth managed to peel himself away long enough to gasp, "We should go upstairs now."

But Roman shook his head. His eyes were dark. "He can wait a little longer. I got plenty in my tank tonight. I want this first one for just us."

"Here?"

"Mm-hmm." Roman kissed his way along the side of Seth's neck, tongue flicking out over the pulse point. "No one but us here, baby. Come ride me."

"That..." Seth cleared his throat. "Good idea."

"I know," Roman said.

_Bastard_.

xXx

Roman had even brought lube, a small plastic bottle tucked inside the folds of his towel.

Which was as clear an indication as any Roman had this planned.

He was a fucking genius, in Seth's admittedly biased estimation.

xXx

Roman spread out both towels on the concrete and arranged himself on his back on them.

Seth, naked now, straddled him, cock rising like the exclamation mark on the world's dirtiest joke.

Big hands splayed on his thighs. "We got away with one today, didn't we?"

"Yeah," Seth said a bit thickly. He flipped the lube's cap open, plucked one of Roman's hands up of his leg, and slicked a generous amount over Roman's fingers.

Roman's hand slid between Seth's legs.

"We can't let that happen again," Roman said. "That was too fucking close. If something had happened to one of you..."

Seth closed his eyes at the first intrusion. "We're fine, Rome. It's okay. We'll be more careful next time."

Roman worked his finger in and out slowly, gently, letting it linger for a beat in between. "You better be. You two idiots get yourselves killed, I'll follow you and kick your little ghost butts. Got it?"

Seth forced his eyes open and quieted Roman with a long kiss, soft lips and easy nipping teeth and tongues sliding together. He pulled away, peeled a damp strand of inky black hair off Roman's forehead, and dropped a kiss there. "Got it. Now hurry up, already."

Roman curled a hand loosely around Seth's dick and squeezed.

Seth shuddered.

"Impatient, huh?"

"Fuck, Rome. Always."

He stroked slow while his fingers stretched Seth open. "Get me ready, then, baby."

Seth's sex-dumb, fumbling hands managed to smear lube onto Roman's dick, somehow.

And then it was the old familiar: rising up to sink down, the stretch and burn and that slow slide all the way to the bottom like some exotic dancer working a pole, and somewhere in Seth's mind he snorted because _fuck_ that was an awful comparison.

It was being filled and full, Roman's cock just nudging Seth's prostate in a way that sent subtle tingles to his dick and balls.

It was that moment where everything stopped, Roman fully in and Seth waiting a breath to get used to it.

It was the two of them moving together, Roman rocking up and Seth grinding down and around, one hand braced on Roman's shoulder and the other wrapped round his own dick.

It was Seth's brain not knowing, quite, what sensations to chase: the soft-light nudge against his prostate or the mounting pressure of impending orgasm.

It was Roman's hands on his hips, guiding everything.

It was harsh breaths and sighs and bitten-off sounds, both of them just aware enough of where they were to not want to draw any unnecessary attention.

It was everything building and building, them moving faster together, the flat slap of skin on skin, hands squeezing like painful vices.

It was everything falling apart, Seth frantically jerking his cock because if he didn't come like now he was pretty sure he was going to die, while Roman bucked and jerked erratically under him, hard branch of a cock feeling like it was fucking _pistoning_ in an out.

It was finally fucking _coming_, Seth feeling his orgasm like a small tide washing over him and then pulling back, and Roman grinding out a curse as he went over.

It was Seth collapsing on Roman's come-covered chest and relaxing, the day's cares and tomorrow's uncertainties as far removed from his mind as Pluto from the sun.

xXx

Another long swim later, he and Roman collected their towels and the lube and headed in.

He glanced at the clock over the front desk and winced.

They'd been outside well over two hours.

"Well," Roman said, shrugging as he took the stairs two by two, "technically it's not possible to die from a case of blue balls, so I'm sure he's fine. Probably pissed off and wound up, but at least he'll go quick."

Seth, walking behind him, raised eyebrows at that. "What's the matter, old man? Not as much in the tank as you thought?"

"It was a long-ass day, Seth," Roman pointed out. "We almost _did_ get killed."

"Which happens at least three times a week," Seth retorted. "Admit it: you're getting old."

"I'm a year older than you," Roman said. "If I'm old you're old, too."

"I'm still younger than you. And, seriously, if you're not gonna be, uh, up for it again, just sit behind him and hold him like you did that one time. I'll ride him. I got another in me for sure."

"Oh no," Roman said, "I think you'll find the old man still has life in him yet. But if you're gonna challenge me like that, you'd better be ready to play hard. You know he will."

"Challenge fucking _accepted_, Rome. Show me what you got."

Gray eyes dancing with rare mirth, Roman slapped open the door to the second-floor hallway hard enough to send water drops flicking out of his hair.

Seth blinked them out of his eyes and hiked a foot to kick Roman's green-and-black butt again.

Laughing like a couple drunk kids, they raced down the hall.

xXx

Funny thing, though:

Dean wasn't waiting for them.

He'd was asleep, sprawled out on his stomach in nothing but a pair of black underwear, sleep-slack face turned toward the door.

Seth, standing near the foot of his own bed, glanced around. "So weird to see him still."

"Mm-hmm." Roman settled hands on Seth's shoulders and leaned close. "Come take a shower with me. I don't want to be smelling this chlorine shit in my hair all night and you need to finish what you started."

"Yeah," Seth said, flicking an itchy wet strand of blond hair off his cheek. "Totally."

They left Dean to his sleep.

God knew he needed it.

xXx

Roman shoved Seth against the shower wall and gave him a down-and-dirty handjob, hand tight and twisting around Seth's cock. His mouth and tongue and the hand not stroking Seth were fucking _everywhere_. It was an all-out assault, all input and so overwhelming he found his mind on overload again, and his knees nearly buckled when he finally came, Roman's hand covering his mouth to stifle the groan.

Still reeling and coming down, Seth let his knees come unhinged the way they seemed to want to as he sank down to take Roman's stiffening cock into his mouth.

Instead of taking his time and teasing, drawing everything out, Seth saw the wild look in Roman's eyes and just fucking went to town, working over Roman's dick as furiously fast as Roman had just worked his over – hands and tongue, little teeth scrapes, hand cupping Roman's balls, and letting Roman fuck his mouth for a few strokes every so often until Roman threw his head back and Seth tasted come in his mouth.

Afterward, Roman drew Seth to his feet and kissed him soundly as the shower washed them clean.

xXx

Dean was still out like a light when they staggered out.

Wordlessly, they killed the room's lights, switched off the TV, and headed to bed.

Roman spooned Seth against him, murmured, "Love you, baby," into Seth's ear, and was soon breathing deep and even.

"Love you, too, Rome," Seth said, and let his eyes drift shut.

xXx

_See_? one of the radios in his head bleated at him. _They didn't even want to have sex with you – just each other._

"Shut up," Dean mumbled, stuffing his head under his pillows. "Not now, not now, not now."

_You heard them_.

He had.

("Love you, baby.")

("Love you too, Rome.")

Nothing for him.

They'd fucked in the bathroom.

The lightsaber snap-hiss sound of the shower kicking on had woken him up.

Started the fucking radios again, and how he'd managed to hold still so long he didn't know.

Felt like he had maggots crawling under his skin.

Everything was so fucking _loud_ in his head.

(_There was a man. King of spades with his chrome eyes and a smile that cut right through you._)

(_There was no man. He wasn't real._)

(_He's dead.)_

_(No, alive.)_

_(He doesn't exist.)_

_(Yes he does_.)

But the loudest thing of all:

_They._

_Don't._

_Want._

_You._

As quietly as he could, he crept out of bed.

Grabbed his guns off the table.

They'd worked just fine in the field today.

Surely they'd work tonight.

_Surely_.

xXx

Hunched down against the moonlit side of a building, a forgotten corner where no traffic or people would ever pass even during the busy part of the day.

Brick rough against his bare back.

Rocks biting the bare souls of his feet.

Bugs nipping and biting his bare arms and legs with their vampire teeth.

Tear-drowned eyes pinched shut.

A gun against each temple.

_Surely_.

xXx

_On._

_Off._

_Life._

_Death._

_Remember._

_Forget_.

xXx

Squeeze.

xXx

_Click. Click._

xXx

Nothing.

xXx

A game of Russian Roulette he couldn't possibly survive, but somehow he did a dozen more times that night.

xXx

And when Seth Rollins woke up in the four a.m. dark, he saw Dean hunched in a chair under the window, hands pressed to his temples, crying. Heard him mumbling, "Why won't it work? God, why won't it fucking _work_?"

He shifted to get up, but stopped when he felt Roman's arms tighten around him.

If they tried to talk to Dean now, he'd just start yelling again.

He sighed.

Roman squeezed him.

_I know, baby_.

xXx

Round and round and around.

xXx

A/N: Next up, Regal's back, we check on in on Bray, and we find out what Vince McMahon wants with Our Heroes. Thanks for reading.


	3. Journeys

A/N: Thanks to everyone who's read and reviewed so far. Exposition-heavy chapter, mostly to flesh this puppy out. Backstory for Bray and some forward story for the Shield and Regal. Still a bit fragmented, but I'll start drawing the lines to connect all these points together in the next couple chapters. Enjoy.

II. Journeys

Space-bound, up in a ship bound for a shaman.

Abigail was off somewhere with the family.

Bray had found himself craving solitude, and had retreated up to his quarters, to his rocking chair in front of the big window, in order to find it.

Found himself thinking not about things present, but things past.

xXx

From the time he was old enough to understand what they were, Bray believed in monsters.

He had one, after all, some whispering dark thing that lived way down deep in the back of his mind, burrowed in as deep as it could get and latched on with claws sharp as razors.

A gift from his mother.

Mama had one, too: a chaos monster that slipped his control sometimes and drove him into a mindless mad frenzy of destruction, its rage hot enough to burn the very heart out of a star.

It was as terrifying as it was wonderful.

Bray had many a fond childhood memory of seeing his mother literally ripping men apart with his bare hands, normally quiet blue eyes red-tinged and homed in on their target with unyielding tenacity, teeth bared in a wordless feral snarl, face and hands gone bloody.

Mama was the family's Guardian, its shield against a quarter-galaxy full of people who'd come to hate Daddy for being the sort of politician who promised one thing but delivered something else entirely.

A man of great power, Daddy.

He didn't have a monster, though; he just _was_ one.

Arbitration Minister William Regal.

Out in the Quadrant - the stretch of twelve hundred inhabited planets and a few hundred stars and a whole lot of empty space that Bray and his family called home - the Ministry was the law over everything. They ruled trade and defense, currency, technology research, education, and exploration - and by the time Bray was born, they were powerful enough no one dared stand against them.

The Ministry - QuadMin - had the power to blow stars out of existence.

They played a being a benevolent government, but men like Daddy gave lie to that.

Arbitration Ministers traveled from planet to planet to solve disputes and to stop small conflicts from flaring up into big wars.

So they said, anyway.

But for all that Daddy preached peace to the people he was sent to help, behind their backs he sang a different tune: that war was a far more profitable business than peace.

He stopped his share of conflicts - it'd have looked strange otherwise - but more than once, Mama had to hustle Daddy and Bray (and Daniel, before he went off to school) away from a planet that had begun to moan and rumble in the throes of war.

They'd left those places burning behind them, and to a young Bray it was a thing of sheer hypnotic beauty, all those flames licking up into the atmosphere like fingers reaching up toward some impossible infinity.

(The dark thing, deep inside, it watched it all and whispered that it could be him making it burn, making the fire reach for him.

_Follow, oh follow, little lambs._)

Watching things burn to ash was like watching Mama in his rages: simple and scary, but _satisfying_, and if Daddy had just admitted he enjoyed the bitter tang of blood in the air and the hot wash of ash on his face the way Mama and Bray both did, Bray would have loved him just as much as Mama.

(Those quiet hours spent standing at Mama's side watching something burn were some of Bray's favorite boyhood memories.)

He knew his daddy enjoyed those wicked things very much.

Saw the bright curve of an adoring smile every time Daddy watched Mama snarling at an enemy like some rabid animal, saw the unabashed delight Daddy took in getting his own punches in, saw the way Daddy's gaze lingered on the carnage and the flames - just the same as Bray's and Mama's did - as he soaked it in.

Never saw a scrap of remorse in the pale cold of Daddy's eyes.

Not then.

Later, though, when he'd call in to his Ministry overseers to explain how things fell apart, he spoke in grave, hushed tones about how "it was inevitable" that a war happened, that the two sides involved just couldn't find accord in themselves, and how sorry he was he'd failed to stop it.

The men on his 'Comm screen would nod and say things like, "Well, we're sure you did your best, William. It's certainly not your fault."

(_Except that it was_, the dark thing told Bray once, and _that_ had been a revelation that stopped Bray in his tracks: Daddy the man behind the scenes playing both sides against the middle, steering them toward war with one hand and promising peace with the other.)

The men would talk of "mitigating" and "containing" and things Bray didn't care to understand, would speak of casualties in hushed and grieving tones while their eyes remained just as cold as Daddy's - starlight on metal.

Calculating.

Thinking of some new law they'd be able to enact, another set of controls, more money made by scaring planets into thinking they needed to invest in QuadMin tech to fortify themselves against threats to their security.

"Progress in the wake of tragedy," Daddy would often say, feigning sadness.

Eyes glinting.

The man in black, dressed like he was shadowmade.

Shadowman.

How Bray _hated_ him.

He would lecture Bray endlessly on the evils of war, on the horrible cost, voice thick with manufactured grief.

Like he thought Bray couldn't see right through him.

Daddy didn't understand Bray nor did he care to take the time to; he wanted Bray to be a copy of big brother Daniel: a bright boy who worked hard and was always upbeat and personable.

Bray was _smart_ - in a lot of ways, he was smarter than Daniel ever was - but he didn't care for the traditional learning Daddy held up as holy writ: politics and languages and mathematics and science and technology.

No, indeed, the kind of learning the dark thing in Bray craved drove him for solitary walks on the planets he called home for a few weeks at a time:

Deep into the wild areas where the most dangerous creatures lived and fought and died.

(_This is how you survive_)

Down into the rotting hearts of broken cities where destitute souls cried out for salvation that wasn't coming.

(_These are your people_)

Through the rich areas of planets where everything was clean and neat and artificial, slime-coated with a layer of hypocrisy he could smell half a world away.

(_These are the sheep_.)

Even to the mighty halls of power where his father met with planetary government officials.

(_They are your enemies and these are their towers_.)

When Bray grew tall enough not to fear his father's great height or his fists, he began asking questions.

Calling Daddy to task for being a lying hypocrite, laughing in malicious glee when Daddy would grow red-faced and would begin spluttering.

Daddy would fire back that Bray was an ignorant little boy, too naive to understand the deep complexities of interplanetary politics and the machinery of war.

There was more going on than Bray realized, he'd say, and then he'd add that Bray would know these things if he'd stop listening to anti-government propagandists and go to school like Daniel.

"I ain't like him, Daddy," Bray would say from the rocking chair in the ship's common room. The chair was a creaky old thing Mama had picked up on a whim years ago, and sitting in it how reminded Bray of all the times he'd crawled into Mama's lap as a small boy and the two of them had sat quietly watching stars blur by our planets burn out the windows.

Never sat with Daddy, though, not ever.

Daddy, usually pacing the narrow common room, would stop. "You should be like him. He's got drive and determination to make something of himself. What have you got?"

Bray would smirk. "_I got the whole Quadrant in my hands_," he'd sing.

"Stop that," Daddy'd snap.

"_I got the whole wide Quadrant in my hands_."

"Bray!"

Round and around they'd go until Mama would step between them and snap at them both to shut up.

The one thing Daddy and Bray both agreed on was that it was generally _not_ a good idea to piss Mama off, so they would separate.

Nights like that, Bray and the dark thing would dream that they burned Daddy alive.

He'd wake smiling.

One of the most powerful men in the Quadrant, and he couldn't control his own son.

When the dark thing finally broke free, Bray wasn't surprised that it happened when he was out with his Mama.

Strange and restless and a lot smarter than he played, Mama Ambrose was a man who'd learned young the value of keeping his mouth shut and his ears open.

He was the one who first spotted Bray's difference from Daniel - the dark thing - for what it was.

He was always the first one to see danger coming - seemed to have a sixth sense for when the wars were on their way, and never failed to have everything packed and ready to go.

Even though it worried him, and even though Daddy objected, he never asked Bray to take anyone along with him on those solitary walks.

Bray loved his mother every bit as fiercely as he hated his father.

Mama was a man constantly at war with himself, fighting to keep his monster on its leash, but Bray never once heard him try to apologize for what he was or the things he did. Even without the monster, life had twisted him up enough inside he _craved_ the dark and ugly and savage and broken - embraced it in a way Daddy refused to, and never lied about it the way Daddy did.

The day the dark thing found its way out, Mama and Bray were ambling aimless through a planet's dirty capitol city, having been kicked off their ship because Daddy needed quiet time to work.

Four big men armed with knives boiled out at them from a black alley mouth.

Bray never knew who they were or why they attacked, but he didn't care.

Mama said, "Get behind me."

Bray did, but when he heard his Mama snarl in pain, saw Mama go down to a knee with blood seeping through his pants, his dark thing _leapt_ forward and the next thing he knew, he was circling his enemies, taunting words and mocking laughter flowing like water from some wonderful poisoned well.

He looked at them upside down, contorting himself.

Three stepped away, but one called him a freak and stepped forward.

Mama uncoiled and launched himself at the man so fast even Bray was surprised, roaring, fists and feet flailing with no grace or coordination.

Bray laughed and kicked as hard as he could at one of the others.

He lost himself to the fight, talking and howling with wild mirth, and punching and kicking until the sharp scent of blood filled his nostrils and heard bones snap and felt himself, for the first time in his life, have the power.

Oh how he _gloried_ in it - in seeing the fear shining up at him from the broken, ruined faces.

(_They are your enemies, brought down to their knees_.)

Killing them wasn't half as satisfying as that, but still, the dark thing murmured its approval as he stood there panting over the two he'd killed himself.

Afterward, he and his Mama carried all four off the quiet street and into the silent dark of the alley.

The dark thing receding like a tide pulling away from shore, Bray pulled a firestick out of his pocket, scratched it against the grimy brick wall beside him to light it, and dropped it.

Scent of ashy charred flesh and hair drifted up and up and up, and Bray never forgot that, the way the orange-tinted smoke carried off into the sky.

Nor did he forget the quiet hand that settled on his shoulder and squeezed, just once.

Or the way the flames danced in Mama's eyes, bright and joyful and _alive_.

Or the way they made Mama's earring glow like a tiny golden star.

Up until the day Mama broke Bray's heart, this was the happiest moment of his life - here, in a narrow alley on some on-the-verge-of-war planet, with the bodies of four strangers burning in front of him and the dark thing finally sated inside him and his Mama standing beside him looking worried and proud, fifteen-year-old Bray never felt more at peace.

He knew all about monsters, all right.

They didn't frighten him at all.

xXx

"Bray?"

_Her_, that soft voice like a light in the dark, drifted through his memories and tugged him back to now. He didn't stop rocking, but did look away from the window and all the stars that blurred by. "What is it, darlin?"

Abigail drifted over to stand beside him, tiny and pale and perfect, big liquid eyes full of concern. Her little hand found its way to his shoulder. "You're far away again."

Bray shook his head and covered her hand. "I'm right here."

"No, you're not," she said, sighing. She sat down lightly on his lap and settled her head in the crook of his neck. "You've been far away ever since we left. Where'd you go?"

Bray wrapped an arm around her and nuzzled his cheek into her hair. "Just thinkin' of way back when."

"_Them_." A word contempt-dipped. "Why are you looking back, Bray? There's nothing for you there. The way's forward. Your family's _here_. They're waiting for you down in the chapel. They need you, and so do I. Once we have that totem, I'll need you more than ever."

("_She isn't what you think she is_." Mama's voice, pushed forward by the dark thing, and wasn't it funny how he used to trust that voice?)

"They _hated_ you, Bray," Abigail said them. "They never understood you. Not like we do. They never _loved_ you. Remember? You were just a boy, and your own parents hated you. Every time you looked to them for comfort, they turned you away. They lied to you. Treated you like you didn't matter because you weren't _him_. Your brother. _Remember_ that, Bray. _They_ never loved you, but _I_ do. Your family down in the chapel, _they_ do."

And Bray remembered his Mama and Daddy _never_ loved him, remembered all those times he tried to crawl into Mama's lap only to be pushed off and told to go away, the first time he killed someone and how Mama screamed at him for it, how they knocked him down and hit him and how he dreamed often that he burned them both alive,

(_Never ever hit you_, the dark thing muttered churlishly. _Never yelled. Mama was _proud_._)

Abigail tucked a strand of Bray's hair behind his ear. "Forget about this, Bray," she said. "Forget all about whatever you're worrying over and come sit with your family. Your people. We'll lead you out of the dark."

Wash of warmth his mind, _light_, and that dark thing retreated.

She climbed down off Bray's lap and as Bray rose out of the old rocking chair and turned to make his way down to the ship's chapel, Bray glanced out the window again, at the stars blurring by, and tried to remember what it was he'd been thinking about just now.

He guessed it didn't matter.

Abigail slipped her tiny hand in his and smiled up at him.

("_She's not what you think she is_.")

He smiled back and squeezed her hand.

The way was forward, and together they went that way to be with the family.

xXx

Planet Earth.

William Regal sat the back of a black car and watched New York's buildings blur by without really seeing them.

Up front, in the driver's seat, his bodyguard Wade Barrett spoke tensely into the bluetooth microphone hung over one ear.

Regal ignored that, too, save to make note of how white Wade's knuckles were on the wheel.

Sheamus had called to warn them they'd been spotted in New York, and that Vince McMahon was on the warpath.

The shot Regal had fired across McMahon's bow this morning - leaking a small batch of very damning McMahon Group financial statements to the FBI - had been a desperation play, something to send McMahon and company scrambling for cover while Regal regrouped and readied himself for the next attack.

No use being subtle now; this close to the end, it was time to fire with everything he had.

It was Vince McMahon's people who fired the first shot when they'd murdered Dean.

Regal had made it his life's mission to see Vince McMahon's billion dollar empire burned to the ground for that - by any means necessary.

He now had the way.

And Vince knew it.

Hence the ever-tightening noose, and Barrett's hands all but throttling the wheel.

"All right," Barrett said tersely. "Call me back when you've got it."

Regal, elbow propped on the door's armrest and his chin propped his his hand, said, "So?"

"Bad news, I'm afraid," Barrett said, tossing the earpiece onto the dash and carding fingers through short dark hair. He met Regal's gaze in the rearview mirror. "Apparently McMahon has built himself a team just to hunt you down. It's a very small but very _good_ strike team called The Shield. McMahon put these guys together a few years ago and have had them in the field running special missions ever since. Sheamus said both McMahon and Helmsley are over the moon about these blokes. There's just three of them, they're the ones who brought Austin and Foley down earlier this year, _and_ in an piece of even worse news, they've got Daniel Bryan working with them."

"Oh dear," Regal muttered.

Daniel "Little Dragon" Bryan: technological genius, hacker, and trained fighter - a rare combination of intelligence and power in a small package. He'd worked for Regal briefly once upon a time, but he'd had a desire to prove himself capable of working for the biggest and best.

"Yeah," Barrett said grimly. "Any chance we might talk him around?"

Regal shook his head. "He soured on me after that debacle in Dubai. What do we know about this Shield? Three what? Men? Women? Sheep? Dogs?"

Barrett huffed a laugh. "Men, I'd - well, no. A team of she-assassins would be…" He trailed off, eyes gone a bit cloudy.

"Fuel for your wet dreams," Regal said agreeably. "Whereas a team of men-"

"Would be fuel for _yours_," Barrett finished for him.

"That it would, but more to the point, I rather doubt it would occur to Vince to use women. He doesn't see them as anything more than stuffing for bras and panties."

"Mm." Barrett's smile widened. "His loss. Yours too."

"All the more for you, I suppose. Getting back to the Shield…?"

"Three blokes. Reigns, Rollins, and Ambrose. All late twenties, and - what?" Barrett's eyes narrowed.

The name 'Ambrose' had given Regal a bit of a jolt, and he'd frozen until he reminded himself that, while it wasn't a terribly common name, it wasn't so _un_common others couldn't have had it. "Nothing," he said, waving the concern off. "Continue."

"There's nothing else to go on just yet," Barrett admitted. "Sheamus just found out. He's working on getting us more to go on - just wanted to warn us they're coming. Three men in black gear. That's what gave me. But he'll try to have something more for us by the time we reach Boston."

"Photographs if he can," Regal said. "I'd like to know who we're up against." He inclined his head. "You look worried, Wade."

"Sheamus had no idea about these three, and he's Hunter's right-hand man," was the quiet reply. Wade's big thumb tapped on the wheel. "Just wondering what other nasty surprises McMahon has up his sleeve we don't know about. And if that means McMahon is just playing his cards close, or if it means they found Sheamus out."

Regal shook his hair back off his face, settled back into the cool leather seat, and turned to watch the buildings again. "If they knew he was working for me, he'd be dead."

Vince McMahon wasn't the sort to play games.

Not that _that_ was any sort of comfort.

Judging from the silence that greeted his answer, Barrett felt the same.

xXx

New York hotel, late night, and Dean was having an honest-to-God meltdown.

He'd been quiet all day - too quiet.

Calm-before-the-storm quiet.

Seth and Roman had tried to draw him into their bed early that morning to make up for leaving him hanging the night before, but he just shook his head went to take a shower.

After that, he'd slept the entire way from their rural Colorado hotel to the airport in Denver.

In the air from Colorado to Connecticut, he'd put his earbuds in and stared out the window until he'd fallen back asleep.

He did without often enough that Seth and Roman once again just decided to leave him to it.

Roman wrapped an arm around Seth's shoulders at some point, drawing him as close as he could given the slightly awkward angle their seats left them with, and the two of them soaked in the relative peace of the day.

After yesterday's frenetic near-death experience, it was nice to have a day to unwind, and they'd done it all the way, exchanging lazy kisses and lazy handjobs in between sharing idle speculation over what McMahon was going to ask them to do.

Huge job, McMahon had blustered at them once they'd all taken a seat in the conference room across the hall from McMahon's office.

Just huge.

McMahon had presented them contracts that nearly doubled their already not-inconsiderable base pay and offered a hefty bonus, and explained that this was The Big One - what they'd been trained for.

What they'd been trained for:

To stop an international terrorist who had some kind of personal vendetta against Vince and Hunter.

That man was William Regal.

According to McMahon, this Regal had become wealthy and powerful by walking in and taking over a dying New York drug empire. He'd turned it around by brokering smart, under-the-table deals with anyone and everyone, building himself an underground network that tied him to human traffickers, smugglers and counterfeiters, identity thieves, other drug cartels, and terrorist organizations.

"This guy is about as bad as bad gets," Hunter'd said, blunt hands folded together on the table, voice quiet and grave. "He's smart, ruthless, and he's got an axe to grind. We don't know exactly what the hell Vince did to piss him off, but he's coming after Vince with a vengeance. His people bombed two oil refineries that Vince was looking to purchase - those Zero Day ones. Nobody can _prove_ Regal's people were behind it, but we're pretty sure."

"He's making things up about me, too," Vince had added. "Fabricating financial statements to try to implicate _me_ for things he's done himself, for example."

"Our guy at the FBI just told us he turned over some of those fake financial statements," Hunter went on. "We know they're fake, but they're opening an investigation anyway."

Vince nodded, rheumy eyes seeming to flare alight with sudden anger. "They have to, unfortunately."

Seth, mystified, had shaken his head. "Well, if they're fake, then what's the problem? It'll go away, right?"

"Not if the news gets hold of it," Dean said. He was swiveling back and forth in his chair, chewing on a thumbnail. "Doesn't matter if it's fake or not. Still bad PR. How do you not know what you did to piss this guy off? He's doing all this big shit to you, it can't be for no reason."

Vince had looked mildly irritated as he said, "When you catch him, ask him. I'd like to know myself. But, believe it or not, I _don't_ know. I've never met the man in my life. But I have a lot of people who work for me, and the likelihood of one of them doing something to set him off is high. It wouldn't be the first time."

"I see," Dean muttered in a tone that said he didn't buy a word of it.

"This is what you've been trained for, gentlemen," Hunter said. "All the people you've taken out for the last two years are people Regal has worked with or considers friends. Whether you know it or not, you've already cut his legs out from underneath him. Now it's time to move in for the kill."

He'd flicked the lights off and booted up a laptop that was connected to a projector.

Picture of a blond-haired guy in his early forties filled the screen - cold eyes, colder expression, and a sharp black suit reminded Seth irresistibly of a comic book villain.

Lex Luthor with hair.

Which was kind of fitting, since people had started calling Roman Superman lately.

If Seth had to pinpoint the exact moment Dean's meltdown started, that was it.

Because Seth turned to throw the Lex Luthor thing out there, but he forgot all about it when he caught sight of a very frozen, wide-eyed Dean staring at the screen.

It was like that scene in _Jurassic Park_ where the girl spotted a raptor as she and her brother ate. She'd frozen, just gone completely still, except the Jell-O on her spoon was shaking.

The hand near Dean's mouth was shaking, really shaking, but he was otherwise still.

Hunter, apparently not noticing. starting talking again, something about files and New York and a car, but Seth barely heard him. He kept sneaking looks out of the corner of his eye, tense and hoping to God they could just get through this without incident.

Thankfully, they did.

Seth, Roman, and a zombie-walking Dean made it the hell out of there and into a waiting car without a word passing between them.

Dean was white as a sheet, breathing hard, muttering under his breath as he stared out the window, and twitching he was having severe withdrawals.

"What the hell, man?" Roman asked.

Dean didn't answer.

"Dean?" Seth tried gently.

Nothing.

xXx

At the hotel an hour later, Seth and Roman left the still-silent Dean alone in the room for a few minutes while they ran down to grab dinner.

When they got back to the - fancy, high dollar - room, they found Dean hunched in a tight, dark corner near the dresser, fists against his temples, rocking, eyes squeezed shut and tears streaking down his unshaven cheeks.

"...with the chrome eyes," he was mumbling, "but he's dead. No alive. No dead. Alive. Alive. Fuck, you saw it. You saw it. _Fuck_. He's not real. Is he? He is but he's - no, That…alive. He's alive, but he's - real? Is he? _Fuck_. It hurt. Fuck, it _hurts_. I - why can't I remember? I didn't forget. I _didn't _forget. But I can't _remember_. He's dead. But he's not real. Alive? But…? _Hurts. Hurts_. Fuck. God, make it stop. I just want it to stop. Why can I make it stop?"

Seth tossed the fast food bag onto the table and shook off the restraining hand Roman put on his shoulder.

He walked over and sat down on Dean's right.

Dean didn't even stir, and that river of nonsense words kept right on flowing.

Seth caught Roman's eye and pointed to Dean's other side. "Help me."

After what seemed like a hundred years, Roman finally sighed and made his way over to sit on the floor on Dean's left.

"Dean?" Seth tried.

"_Dean_," Roman said gruffly.

Nothing.

Gingerly, like he was going in to diffuse a ticking bomb, Seth reached over and wrapped a loose hand around Dean's wrist and tugged it away from his head. "Hey."

Dean _jerked_ like he'd been electrocuted, and then lashed out, all wild animal instincts, and punched Seth square in the mouth.

Seth slumped backward against the wall, hand over his split lip.

Roman tackled Dean to the ground.

Dean snapped and snarled and flailed like an animal caught in a trap. His face was a twisted rage-mask, watery eyes narrow and _dark_, teeth bared.

"_Dean_," Roman bellowed, "_stop_." He had a knee in the middle of Dean's back and one of Dean's arms pulled up so far it looked like it was about to pop out of the socket.

Seth, ignoring the throb in his lip, crawled over to take Dean's whipping, thrashing head between his hands.

"Dean," he said, forcing Dean's head _up_, forcing eye contact. "Hey. _Hey_. Come back, man. Wherever the hell you are, come back. Stop. It's us, man. Calm down."

Dean tried to bite him, thrashed despite Roman still pinning him down.

Seth hauled off and slapped him, just a fast instinctive movement, the flat of his palm swung low and flat flush across Dean's cheek, hard enough to snap Dean's head back.

"...ow."

"Well, don't fuckin' try to bite me, asshole," Seth said. He took of Dean's head again and turned it to make eye contact. "Calm the fuck down."

Blinking, Dean said, "Seth? What-? Did you just slap me? The _fuck_? Fuck. Rome? What are you doing? You're gonna break my fuckin' arm. Get off me." He tried once again to get up.

"Stop fighting," Roman growled at him, gray eyes like storm-thick skies. "Calm _down_."

"Rome, you're breaking my fuckin' arm, man," Dean said, distress in his voice. "Fucking let go."

Seth sat back and nodded at Roman. "Let him go."

Warily, slowly, Roman did, backing off just enough to hover protectively behind Seth.

Dean pulled himself back up into his corner, hunching, cradling his shoulder, glaring. "What the _fuck_, man?"

Roman stared him down: an angry father browbeating a disobedient son. "You had that coming. Look at Seth."

Dean blinked and glanced Seth's way. Did a double-take. "What happened to you?"

Seth swiped blood off his lip. "You punched me, asshole."

"You were about ready to rip his head off," Roman said, arms folded across his chest. "What the hell is the matter with you, Ambrose?"

Bafflement and realization in quick succession, and Dean scrubbed a hand over a damp cheek. "Fuck," he muttered. "Sorry, Seth."

"Don't apologize," Seth said. "Fucking talk to us, dude." He leaned over and tapped the side of Dean's head. "What the hell is going on up there? What freaked you out so bad today? Was it that Regal guy? It was, wasn't it? Why? Do you know him or something?"

"Yes," Dean said. "No. I - no. I don't. But I do. I - just…" He pulled himself even further into the corner, drawing his knees up to his chest. HIs hands found their way back up to the sides of his head. "I don't know, I don't know, I don't fucking _know_."

Seth scooted around so he was crouched right in front of him. "Hey, hey, hey, breathe man. Just - take it easy, huh? Look at me. It's okay."

"It's _him_," Dean said, turning suddenly desperate, pleading eyes on Seth. "The king of spades with the chrome eyes. He's alive, but he's not real. But he's _real_, and he's dead. He can't be real _and_ alive. He _can't_. How?"

"Dean, what are you talking about?" Seth asked urgently. "Who's the king? Regal? Is that who you mean?" He twisted around to look at Roman, but Roman just glowered down.

Dean, meanwhile, nodded. "Yeah. Him." Quick, flinching glance up at Roman and then back down at Seth again. "I don't know. I don't."

"Okay, okay," Seth said. Without turning, he added, "Rome, either sit down or go away and let me handle this, but move, would you? You're making me nervous standing over me like that."

"No way I'm leaving you alone with this," Roman said.

Seth looked around at him again. "I'll be _fine_. He won't hurt me again."

"I won't," Dean said. He just sounded miserable. "I didn't mean to, Rome. I'm _sorry_."

Roman's jaw remained set in its hard line. "Lotta bad things happen because people _didn't mean to_. That's no excuse." He hunkered down next to Seth, though, the two of them effectively penning Dean into the corner. "What happens if you snap like that again and I'm not there to stop you hurting Seth?"

Dean shrank down into the corner, some kicked-down dog retreating to lick wounds left by an unkind owner.

Seth's heart broke all over again. "Dammit, Rome-"

"No," Roman said. "He's out of control. You know it and I know it. It's high time we stopped letting him spin and try to grab hold of him before something happens."

"What do you think I'm doing, man?" Seth snapped. "He needs us to listen to him, you asshole not rip him apart. Look at him. I know shit's messed up, but are you really treating somebody you love and who needs you like this? Is this who you are?"

A muscle in Roman's jaw worked. "I just don't want you getting hurt, Seth."

"I'm not some fuckin' damsel in distress you gotta rescue," Seth said, all exasperated affection. "I can fuckin' ninja my way out of just about anything. So stop the overprotective boyfriend shit, and get off Dean's back. He doesn't need that."

Roman perked up visibly. "Boyfriend, huh? I like the sound of that."

Seth covered his face with a hand. "You're killing me, Rome."

"You said it," Roman pointed out.

"I just meant - oh, fuck it. Fine. Boyfriend it is." But held up a hand. "One of two. Because I love you like crazy, but I love this crazy asshole just as much." He hooked his thumb at Dean. "I love you both. And I really don't give a shit if you don't love each other or if you can't say it back. Fuckin' deal, all right? It's either all three of us or it's none of us." He didn't give either man a chance to answer. "Tell me about Regal, Dean."

Long pause at that, time and tension stretching like a rubberband to its snapping point.

Dean worried his thumbnail with his teeth. "I remember him, clearly, but I've never met him in my life. I watched him die on a street corner. That guy. That picture...fuckin' fireworks in my head. Like how you take a bunch of iron filings and throw 'em loose on a paper and they stay scattered until you put a magnet near 'em? It's like that. LIke I got all this noise and I don't know what it means, but then I see his picture - just the picture - and that's it. But it doesn't make fuckin' sense. 'Cuz I know he's dead. Only I never knew him, so how do I know? I never met him, so how do I know his first name is really Steven, and he's left-handed, likes neat scotch, comes from a town called Blackpool in England, and says 'hisself' sometimes instead of 'himself' when he's wound up?

"Why does it feel like I can't remember anything when I haven't forgotten anything?

"I never knew him but I know him, and he's alive but he's dead, and he's real but he's not real, and I don't fucking _know_, okay? I don't know."

Sudden, vicious thump as the back of his head hit the wall.

"I don't _know_."

_Thump_.

"I don't fuckin' know."

_Thump_.

LIke he was trying to break the wall.

Spot of blood on the remorseless white.

Roman shot forward and grabbed him by the shoulders before he could hit himself a fourth time.

"_Stop_," Roman said, and he sounded _scared_, the skin around his eyes gone a little white and his mouth tight. Tattooed arm strong around Dean's back while the other hand cradled the bloody back of Dean's head.

Both men on their knees.

"Jesus _fuck_," Dean muttered, "make it _stop_."

Tentative arms found their way around Roman's back.

Seth moved to wrap them both up, one arm around strong shoulders and the other around shaking ones, head bowed against theirs.

And eventually, a question deep in the flinty gray of Roman's eyes: _What do we do?_

Seth could only shake his head, helplessly, as he held on.

_I don't fuckin' know._

xXx

Later:

The three of them on the bed, wrappers of their cold fast food dinner tossed into the paper sack at the foot, Dean laying between Seth and Roman, who were both sitting up.

Roman's hand drew absent lines and circles across the wrinkled gray fabric covering Dean's chest. "Maybe we need to get you in to see somebody," he said, breaking the long, shocky silence that had fallen between them. "Like a doctor. What if there's a medical reason?"

"What, like a tumor?" Seth said.

"It's not a too-mah," Dean said, Arnold-voiced, cracking a smile for the first time all fucking day. "No headaches."

"Doesn't matter," Roman said. Not smiling. "You're acting weird, you're hearing shit, and you're crying all the time. Maybe something happened."

Seth shifted. "Maybe something did. You never did tell us what happened when those weirdos caught you."

Sunlight on gunmetal gleam in Dean's eye. "No, I started hearing this shit like a couple days before all that happened. I had that really fucked up dream about being in some swamp or something. And then I woke up with all this garbage in my head."

"What if it's schizophrenia or something?" Roman asked. "I still think we need to get you in to see somebody. And no way in hell are we doing this job for McMahon. We gotta get you right first."

The sudden fierce protectiveness in his voice warmed Seth all the way through.

Dean threw an arm over his eyes. "We gotta do the job, Rome. I gotta find Regal, see if that shakes something loose. Mean, if it doesn't, fine, after the job, I'll go get checked out or whatever, I guess, but I don't wanna waste the time right now. It's fuckin' crazy, I know, and it doesn't make any fuckin' sense whatsoever, but we gotta do the job. We have to, man."

"No," Roman said gently. "No way. I'm not trying to hurt you here, but you're a ticking damn time bomb right now. You lose control again like you did earlier, like you did _yesterday_ – what the hell were you thinking, running out there like that, man? - and then what? What if you lose it and we blow the job? We're going to have enough to worry about _on_ the job. I don't want to be worrying about you at the same time."

"Yeah? What're you gonna do, Rome? Call up McMahon and be like, 'Hey, Dean's gone fucking nuts. Would you mind letting us out of those huge-ass contracts so we can go waste time figuring out there's nothing fucking wrong with him – nothing medicine can fix, anyway'? I'm sure he'll be real understanding."

"Dean," Seth said, sighing. "No. Roman's right. We can't do this. _You _can't."

Dean lowered his arm. "Fuckin' _watch_ me. I gotta find Regal and that's that. Either you're with me or you're not, but don't get in my fucking way."

"Hey!"

"I know I sound crazy, okay. Completely fucking whacked out psycho. I _know_. I feel that way. But I'm telling you, I _have_ to find Regal. I have to."

"What if there's no answer there?" Seth asked. "We do this, we take a chance on you holding your shit together, and we don't find anything. Then what?"

"Then you ship me off to the fuckin' looney bin and leave me to fuckin' rot for all I care. Or, even better, put a bullet in my head and put me outta my fuckin' misery. Hey! _Ow_! Fugger! Led go!"

Roman used the hand pinching Dean's nose to turn Dean's head. "Don't ever let me catch you saying anything like that again, Ambrose," he said, leaning down so they were eye to eye. "I will break your shit _off_. We're not gonna leave you to rot and we're sure _shit_ not gonna put a bullet in your damn fool head. Do you understand me?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Dean said. "I god it, I god it. Led go. Jesus."

"I'm serious."

"So'b I. I uddersand. Jesus, Roban, led go. You're gudda breag it." Once Roman let go, Dean covered the lower part of his face with both hands. "Holy _fuck_, Rome. You almost break my arm and you almost tear my fuckin' nose off in one night. The fuck is _that_ all about?"

"Oh, don't be a baby," Roman said. "It's just a little attention-getter. You don't want to listen to me, I'll make you. We're not going after Regal. End of discussion."

"Yes, we are," Seth said suddenly.

He arranged himself crosslegged at Dean's hip and turned to face his team.

Silence roared and raged around them.

Furious gray and curious blue looked over and up at him.

He said, "I can't even pretend I get what the fuck's going on in your head, Dean. Maybe Roman's right and you're actually sick, or...fuck, I don't know. But, look, let's do the job. Let's find Regal and take him out. We're already on the job anyway, and I really don't want to have to explain this to Vince.

"We can do this," he added for Roman's benefit. "We just gotta change a few things. Like we all share a bed. I don't give a fuck how crowded it is. We're all sleeping together.

"Second of all, Dean, if you wake up in the middle of the night and you can't sleep, wake me up. Or Roman. Maybe we can't do shit about whatever's going on in your head, but maybe we can distract or something – help you get back to sleep. I don't know. We'll figure something, but, dude, wake us up. I don't care if you're embarrassed or feel awkward about it. We want to help you, so just do it.

"And fucking _talk_ to us. Quit trying to hide shit. If there's something you want or something you need, fucking speak up. If you can tell you're about to lose it, say something – maybe we can pull you back.

"But let's just fucking do this, okay? Let's get it done. If nothing's better afterward, then, yeah, we'll definitely explore other options, but, fuck, Rome, if he talks to us and we keep an eye on him, I think we'll be okay."

"You think we'll be okay," Roman said. Low. Angry. "There's a whole lot on the line for 'you think.'"

"I know, but..." Seth shook his head. "If we say no, he'll leave and try to do it on his own. This way at least we'll keep an eye on him."

Startled flicker in Dean's eyes.

Seth just rolled his._ Think I don't know you, asshole?_

He watched the war play itself out on Roman's face.

And wasn't really that surprised when Roman said, "If shit starts going wrong _during_ the job, we stop. That's my condition."

"All right," Seth said.

Dean nodded and laid back. "If we're all settled, then I don't wanna talk anymore," he said. "Let's fuck. You assholes owe me like four now."

"Three," Seth and Roman said together.

"Whatever. One of you guys just needs to be on my dick in like five seconds. That's all I know."

Seth snorted and slapped his chest. "And they say romance is dead."

Caught Roman's eye.

Saw the disquiet there and offered a small, apologetic smile.

_I know it's fucked up, man, but what else are we gonna do?_

Roman reached over and pushed Seth's hair off his face and kissed his forehead.

Then, together, the pair of them swooped down to tackle their infuriating teammate.

And for a while, there was peace.

xXx

A/N: Thanks for reading.


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